On the Bookshelf

Title: Wildthorn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: 6th March 2009
Source: NetGalley.com

They strip her naked, of everything-undo her whalebone corset, hook by hook. Locked away in Wildthorn Hall—a madhouse—they take her identity. She is now called Lucy Childs. She has no one; she has nothing. But, she is still seventeen-still Louisa Cosgrove, isn't she? Who has done this unthinkable deed? Louisa must free herself, in more ways than one, and muster up the courage to be her true self, all the while solving her own twisted mystery and falling into an unconventional love ...

From the very first page Wildthorn drew me in. It is an engrossing read that I had trouble putting down. Eagland draws readers in with the compelling mystery of first unravelling which is Louisa's true identity and who is responsible for sending her to Wildthorn Hall. Is she Louisa Cosgrove or is she, as she is told, Lucy Childs? Is there a conspiracy to see her locked away or is she nothing more than a paranoid mad woman?

We seek answers to these question through Louisa's memories of her past. Louisa is a complex and unconventional girl with ambitions beyond what society allows a young woman of her station. She longs to study medicine, wishes to marry no man, and struggles to come to terms with her desire for a forbidden relationship.

Louisa endures terrible conditions in the asylum and it is heart-wrenching to realise that Wildthorn only begins to scratch the surface of what horrors asylum patients would have experienced and the general ignorance of mental conditions that prevailed at the time. Louisa finds comfort in her plans to escape and the kindness of only one of the women working at the asylum. Eagland handles the tentative romance that blossoms from this kindness with a subtlety that works well with the characters and the times.

Wildthorn is a captivating historical young adult novel. Readers will be drawn in by Louisa's plight and unravelling the mysteries that surround her.

Terra